


and everyone says this love will change you

by mayerwien



Series: shenanigans starkid au [2]
Category: Shenanigans (Original Universe)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Theatre, Asexual Character, Asexuality, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Slow Burn, Texting, elliot and blake changed my plans at least twice over the course of this fic, secret smoke break otp, textmates to lovers???, tfw your ship just asks each other "how was your day" every day until they fall in love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-07-31 06:29:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20110660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayerwien/pseuds/mayerwien
Summary: “Your humility isn’t false, you know,” Jane tells him. “It’s one of your many charms.”“My many charms?” Nicholas echoes.Jane raises one eyebrow. “Nicholas. Please. You can’t sit there and tell me you don’t know that you have charms.”





	and everyone says this love will change you

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Shenaniganniversary! (Shenanniversary??) <3 Thank you for these past two years of mischief, love, and CRYING. It’s been wild and it’s been great and there are still no words for how happy I am to be in this fandom with you people.
> 
> So, after I revealed my secret Shenanigansverse rarepair a few months ago and Ceece was like “PLEASE EXPLAIN YOURSELF,” I mentioned I had a headcanon for how Nicholas and Jane got closer and started falling for each other. And then I said “but idk if I’m going to write that fic,” and Ceece went “WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T KNOW IF YOU’RE GOING TO WRITE IT?!?!"
> 
> So I guess now I know because here it is, haha! It is a very self-indulgent soft slow burn and omg turning out to be so much longer than I expected, so just (shoves first chapter out the door and runs back up to my room)
> 
> Title and epigraph from “Same Changes”. And as always, shoutout to Ceece for helping me wrangle these two greyhounds <3 best writing partner, ty b ilysm. Here we go!

_well, I ask_

_does anything ever stay the same?_

\- The Weepies

Nicholas has his twenty-fourth birthday at the guest house, with the party planning courtesy of Elliot and Blake; after relenting and letting them take charge, Nicholas told them he didn’t want anything too fancy, but “not too fancy” for those two apparently still involves four kinds of hors d’oeuvres and an ice sculpture bust of Nikolaj Coster-Waldau on the refreshments table. (“Because he’s your same-day birthday buddy,” Blake explained earnestly to Nicholas, to which Nicholas replied, “Blake, I admire your attention to detail, I really do, but now it just looks like I have a creepy fanboy obsession with Jaime Lannister.”)

In the middle of a drunken round of Bowls, Nicholas unpretzels his legs from Elliot’s on the sofa and steps out for a smoke. It’s late July, the middle of summer, and the air is like syrup, warm and sweet and just a little thick. Nicholas picks his way across the grass to the swimming pool, where Jane is already perched on the rim with her pants legs rolled up, one foot in the water and her other leg crossed over her knee.

“Congratulations,” Jane says when she sees him. She leans back, resting her weight on her palms, and exhales a stream of smoke into the air above her. “You’re almost a quarter of a century old. How do you feel?”

Nicholas laughs. “Less surprised than you might think, since I go to work every day to take care of kids who were born after the year 2010. I’m constantly being reminded of my mortality.” Lowering himself to the ground next to her, he tucks his legs underneath him and says, “Speaking of which, thanks again for the gift.” Earlier, Jane gave him a bag of his favorite coffee and a pencil cup shaped like a cat for his desk at work, made out of plastic so it’s kid-safe. She’s always practical and thoughtful like that; something Nicholas is thankful for given the number of impractical friends they have in common.

“You’re welcome.” Jane watches as Nicholas flicks a cigarette out of the pack in his hand. “I thought you were quitting,” she remarks. (Someone or other in the group is always trying to quit smoking, with varying degrees of success each time.)

“I was. Now my birthday gift to myself is un-quitting.” Nicholas holds his cigarette out to her. “Would you light my candle?” he sings as a joke.

Smirking, Jane does, and then Nicholas pauses and leans in to squint at the lighter in her hand. “Is that—do you have a lighter shaped like the Goblet of Fire?” he asks, delighted.

Jane stows it in her pocket. “It’s my lucky one,” she says with a small grin. “My sister gave it to me.”

“How is Evelyn?” Nicholas has met Jane’s younger sister a couple of times; first when she came to watch _Tintin _on opening night, again when she attended one of Blake’s Halloween parties dressed as a spirit medium from some video game about lawyers, and another time when he ran into her bringing doughnuts to Jane on campus, for what Evelyn informed him were Top Secret Reasons that he as a non-Yang was not privy to.

“Good, I think. She doesn’t text me every other day to complain about her internship anymore, which is a welcome change.” Jane takes a drag off her cigarette. “She does ask about you whenever she calls, though.”

Nicholas blinks. “About...me?”

“Mm-hmm.” The corner of Jane’s mouth crooks upwards. “She always wants to know how your acting career is proceeding. Evie says that when you make it big, she wants to be able to say that she was the first to see _the spark of greatness_ in you, and that she knew it from the start.”

Nicholas laughs. “Does she know she’s bound for disappointment? I mean, I’m flattered, but even if I were to give up singing ‘Old Macdonald Had A Farm’ six days a week to pursue a life in the theatre—I doubt I’d be able to fan the spark of greatness into anything worth watching.”

Jane has an entire armory of different frowns, and as she frowns now, her brow dropping low and her lips pressing together, Nicholas realizes he’s well-acquainted with many of them just from having known Jane all these years. “Nicholas,” she says. “You know that you’re fine, right? You’re more than fine. You work hard at everything you do, and you’re good at everything you do. That matters.”

“I know, I know,” Nicholas says quickly, mostly to get that look off Jane’s face. “Sorry. I’m working on the false humility thing, I promise.”

Jane seems to relax a little. “Your humility isn’t false, either, you know,” she tells him. “It’s one of your many charms.”

“My many charms?” Nicholas echoes.

Jane raises one eyebrow. “Nicholas. Please. You can’t sit there and tell me you don’t know that you have charms.”

While Nicholas sits there and puzzles over his apparent many charms, Elliot flings the door of the guest house open and steps out, catches sight of the two of them sitting by the pool, and storms over. “Did you see it?” he demands of Nicholas.

Nicholas blinks slowly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I’m guessing you’re going to tell me.”

_“Ugh,”_ Elliot says, pulling out his phone, and proceeds to read aloud off the screen. _“@realjonahtalbot: To one of my dearest friends in the world, happy birthday! Hope you still remember all of it tomorrow morning. And never forget: _la vérité vaut bien qu’on passe quelques années sans la trouver._ Enjoy the ride. _WINKY FACE.” Elliot points at his phone screen. “And that’s not even the worst of it—he resurrected one of the _blazer photos_. He so obviously cares less about giving you a meaningful birthday greeting than _showing off his history with you _to his one hundred and forty thousand Twitter followers. UGH.”

“I doubt Jonah’s Twitter followers really care about the history he has with some random friend from college,” Nicholas says in amusement.

“The Shenanigans ones care!” Elliot splutters.

“Elliot, you are literally the only person who cares, and you’re way more upset about it than you need to be because you’re drunk,” Jane says in a dry tone.

“I am _not,”_ Elliot replies obstinately, and stomps back and forth in a straight line to prove it. “See?”

Jane sighs. “Yes. I see.”

Elliot mutters darkly, “Anyway, I have way more obscure pictures of Nicholas that I can dig up, his memory isn’t that special,” and starts typing furiously into his phone as he stalks off into the darkness.

“One would think that all this distance would have made him wiser,” Jane remarks as they watch him go.

“One would think,” Nicholas agrees, putting his cigarette back to his lips.

The two of them sit quietly for a moment in the soft blue-green light dancing off the pool’s wavering surface, listening to the muffled pulse of Lana del Rey floating out to them on the breeze. “Hey, what do you want?” Nicholas asks, when he breaks the silence. “For your birthday.”

Jane cocks her head. “My birthday is two months away,” she says.

“I know. I just...thought I’d ask.” And Nicholas wonders then, in a vague kind of way, if it’s even possible for him to give Jane anything that she wants.

Jane shrugs loosely. “On nights like this,” she says, her voice a comfortable drawl, “it’s hard to imagine that there’s anything else I could ask for.”

Nicholas grins. “Fair.” Reaching down into the pool with one hand, he scoops up a handful of water and flicks it at her. Another of Jane’s frowns appears on her face, her tiny _we are not amused _frown, and she kicks her foot out into the water in retaliation to soak his jeans, at the same moment the end of the cigarette in her hand curls and drops to the ground.

“Ohhh, the wax,” Nicholas sings before he can stop himself, and then is more than a little embarrassed when Jane finally laughs.

\--

There’s a bakery and café downtown that Jane likes to work in on the weekends; the croissants are good, no one bothers her or minds that she parks at the same corner table with her earphones in for hours on end, and the cafe interior is all white, which satisfies her on the deepest level of her being.

Jane is used to thinking of this as _her place,_ somewhere she can be when she wants to extract herself from the rest of her life for a little while—so she’s surprised when one Saturday morning she runs into Nicholas there. It feels a little like worlds colliding, looking up from her laptop and seeing him standing by the counter next to her, his hair a little mussed from the wind outside.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Jane says with a grin, dropping her earphones to the table and rotating her wrists to stretch them. “Don’t you have a shift today?”

“I do. One of my co-teachers just had a baby, so we’re throwing him a surprise welcome-back party—but he has a wheat allergy, so we’re getting him a gluten-free cake from here.” Nicholas pushes his glasses up his nose and looks at her. “What about you? Are you in a hurry to get somewhere, or...?”

“I’m here for the day, actually,” Jane says, gesturing at her work setup.

“Do you want to have breakfast? I’m not due at the center until ten.” Nicholas hesitates. “If you don’t mind me disturbing you, I mean.”

“Of course not.” Jane closes her laptop and pushes the other chair out from under the table with the toe of her boot. “I’ve been staring blankly at this screen for an hour. I could use some company for a bit.”

So Nicholas settles down across from her, and as they both order coffee and breakfast sandwiches, Jane realizes it’s the first time she’s ever just—sat and had a meal with Nicholas like this, just the two of them hanging out for no particular reason, without any of the others around. Strange how you can be part of a group of friends that’s practically inseparable, and still not have had a lot of one-on-one time with someone in it.

“So what were you working on?” Nicholas asks as their coffees arrive. The server accidentally sets Jane’s Americano in front of Nicholas, so Nicholas reaches over and switches their coffees, gently pushing Jane’s cup toward her until she curls her fingers around it.

“The UI for the new productivity app.” Jane suppresses a sigh and takes a long sip, letting the coffee scald her throat. “I had a couple of people test it and all of them had different concerns, so I’m starting over.”

“What were the concerns?” Nicholas’s brow wrinkles. He takes a sip of his coffee too, but he’s still looking straight at her.

Jane isn’t accustomed to having all of Nicholas’s attention focused on her. It’s hard to meet his gaze all of a sudden; the sunlight coming through the café’s front window is crossing their table, turning his brown eyes the color of honey. “Oh. No, it’s just…tedious stuff, I won’t bore you with the details.”

“It’s not boring to me,” Nicholas replies, and Jane can see that he means it. So she moves her chair over next to him and shows him the initial design she has saved on her laptop, and then opens up her Moleskine to show him all the mockup sketches she’s made, and explain all the faults the other people on the team found with them.

“What if you just make it really, really simple?” Nicholas asks when she’s done. He points at where Jane has sketched in tabs for the different app menus. “I mean, obviously I don’t know much about designing apps, so feel free to stop me, but—can you do sort of, taps or swipes to bring up all the menu options, instead of putting in tabs they’ll have to click on? So the main screen will just be one thing at a time—the timer, or the to-do list—and then users can, I don’t know, double-tap anywhere on the screen to bring up the menu, or something?”

“Wait,” Jane says slowly. “That’s good.” She swivels her notebook back towards her and scribbles in a quick drawing. “Double-tap and it’ll zoom out to menu icons that they can swipe through. When users install the app and open it for the first time, there can be a little overlay showing them what the gesture controls are. _Fuck.”_ Jane sits back, passing her hand over her eyes. “That’s really good. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.”

“I’m sure you would have eventually,” Nicholas says, smiling. “I just helped you along.”

Jane rolls her eyes good-naturedly, even as she feels some of the stress of the previous week lifting away. “Champion. Remind me to buy you a drink the next time we go out.” The server puts down their sandwiches, and it seems unnecessary at this point for Jane to move back to the other side of the table, so she doesn’t. “What about you?” she asks, slicing neatly through her ciabatta. “How’s work been?”

“I’m never bored.” Nicholas laughs a little, rubbing the back of his neck. “The kids are always a handful, but I’m definitely learning a lot. For instance, did you know babies laugh three hundred times a day?”

Jane smiles. “No, I didn’t know that.”

“There are some things that still surprise me, too…like it continues to amaze me that the one-year-olds can do as much as they do. When one of them stands up by themselves, or says a new word?” Nicholas shakes his head in wonder. “I don’t know, maybe it’s because I don’t have a lot of younger kids in my family anymore, but I always love seeing that.”

Jane remembers, suddenly, being four and holding one-year-old Evelyn in her lap, while they waited for their mother as she talked to the bank teller or bought vegetables from the Asian grocery. _M__ā__ ma, _Jane would whisper to Evie, pointing at their mother’s back. Then she’d guide Evie’s tiny, pudgy hand to the center of her own chest and say firmly, _ji__ě__ jie, _as Evie cooed and giggled and tried to burble the word back_._ Even then, Jane felt a secret, loving thrill, just knowing that here right in front of her was a person—a tiny person, but a whole person—who already had her whole heart.

“I get it,” Jane says, and looks down at her plate, where she’s absentmindedly feathered out the mounds of arugula with her fork. “That’s—a really special feeling.”

Nicholas beams. “It is,” he says, and then he takes out his phone to show her pictures of all the kids at the daycare center and tell her a little about each of them, and Jane has to smile because it’s so endearing to see Nicholas like this, so proud and enthused and happy with what he’s doing.

The conversation turns to funny anecdotes from both their workplaces, and then to news from Anna and Evan who are apparently going through a rough patch again, and then to a dozen other unrelated things—and then Jane happens to look at her watch and says, “Hey, didn’t you say you had to be at work by ten?”

Nicholas stops and frowns down at his phone. “Damn.” He looks back up at Jane. “Right. Okay, I have to run now.” A warm smile flickers over his face, and for a second it seems like he wants to lean forward and give Jane a goodbye hug—but then Nicholas seems to remember that Jane isn’t really the hugging type, and carefully slides his chair back instead. “This was good,” he says. “So I guess I’ll—see you around?”

Jane grins. “You know how we are, none of us can go a week without seeing each other.”

Nicholas laughs. “So much for growing out of our horrifically co-dependent college selves,” he says, carefully picking up the cake box from the extra chair. “Okay. See you soon.” At the door, he stops and waves, and Jane waves back, amused.

Nicholas hasn’t been gone five minutes when Jane’s phone on the table lights up with a text from him. _Thanks for today! Have a good day and don’t get carpal tunnel!_

A smile creeps onto Jane’s face before she realizes it’s there. _Thanks, Doc, _she replies. _Try not to get thrown up on today; dry cleaning is expensive._

_I’ll do my best. Bruce is notorious for throwing up on me specifically._

Jane wrinkles her nose. _Maybe you should start wearing a raincoat to work?_

_No I feel like I’m too tall to wear a raincoat without looking like some creature out of one of those Creepypastas Hazel likes to read._

_Don’t worry, Elliot and I will find you a cute non-Creepypasta-esque raincoat. Something with polka dots._

Nicholas’s next reply takes a few minutes longer. _Look I love you both dearly but if you think you can get me into a polka-dotted raincoat you’d better have another one coming_

Jane smirks to herself. _I feel like you severely underestimate the sway that Elliot and I combined have over you_

_Hahaha, you have no power over me_

_Was that a Labyrinth quote? Nicholas. You’ve been holding out on me._

_Ha. Glad I can still surprise you even after all these years. _ _J_

Around lunchtime Jane gets another text from Nicholas: it’s a group photo from his co-teacher’s surprise party, complete with a banner and hand-drawn decorations made by some of the older children, everyone in it smiling and waving. From the angle, she guesses Nicholas must have stood on a chair to take it. _Sweet, _Jane answers. _Enjoy the party._

Nicholas’s reply after that is a selfie, unusual for him—but it’s a slightly blurry picture of himself grimacing, a paper towel stuck over a damp patch on the front of his shirt and his other arm wrapped around a very guilty-looking baby.

_So about that raincoat, _his text says.

Jane laughs.

\--

They fall into a pattern somehow; one of them usually starts by sending a text in the morning about something random—something Nicholas heard about the new food hall that’s apparently opening at Landmark Center, or an article on ADHD misdiagnoses that Jane thought Nicholas would be interested in, or how the aquarium is putting up those sexy nautilus billboards again—and then they just keep talking throughout the day. Nicholas mostly isn’t allowed to use his phone at work, and he usually has his hands full with the kids anyway, but he texts Jane over lunch break, and then again when he’s on his way home. They become a bright spot in his day, the messages from Jane, and Nicholas finds himself wondering why they never did this before.

Nicholas is stretched out on the sofa one night with a beer in hand and a lap full of Ian Purrtis, texting Jane about Ghibli movies and watching Elliot sit on the floor and sort through his entire wardrobe as he tries to figure out what to keep and what to give to Goodwill. He’s put all his dress shirts into piles by color, and then further subdivided them according to “degrees of crispness,” so as a result there are about twenty different piles of shirts spread out across the coffee table and the extra chairs. When Elliot ran out of surfaces he started laying piles of shirts on top of Nicholas’s outstretched legs, so now he can’t move.

“I think I have too much natural and stone, and not enough cream and ivory.” Elliot folds his arms and studies four of the stacks in front of him.

“Those all look like the same color to me,” Nicholas says, looking up from his phone.

Elliot looks affronted. “It’s times like this I believe the good Lord sent me to you, because otherwise you would have gone through life completely ignorant of these things.”

Nicholas takes a photo and sends it to the group chat, texting with one hand and stroking Ian Purrtis with the other. _Need backup: are all these shirts the same color, yes or no_

_You mean white? _Tim asks.

_ahahahaha good joke tim,_ Blake says. _hey nicholas please tell elliot he needs more cream, he’s going to be desperate come next spring_

Caroline replies, _i don’t know what niecy nash reality show is going on in your apartment right now but it looks fascinating (also sweetheart no they are not all the same color, are you okay)_

Nicholas waits a bit more, and then he sees that Jane is typing. _Totally different undertones, _she says finally, and he grins.

_Wait I don’t get it, _Tim says, _they’re not all white??_

“Okay, you win,” Nicholas calls to Elliot. Ian Purrtis shifts, stretches, and starts making muffins on Nicholas’s stomach.

“Well, obviously,” Elliot huffs. He holds up another shirt that is yet another shade of off-white and says, “Hey, can you ask Jane if she wants this? It’d probably suit her coloring more than mine.”

Nicholas takes another photo of Elliot holding the shirt, and switches back to his private chat with Jane. _I think part of me always wanted to be Lady Eboshi, though, _Jane’s last message reads. _Even though she represents how industrialization inevitably comes at the expense of our natural environment—when I was a kid I admired her strength and her refusal to take bullshit, I guess._

Nicholas pauses. _No I understand, _he replies. _She’s compassionate towards the people she takes into her town because she knows what it’s like to be shunned by the rest of society. She sees the old gods as fairytales, and why should she care about fairytales when there are real humans suffering all around her_

_Trust you to find the kindness in the antagonist’s heart, _Jane answers, and Nicholas can practically hear the amusement in her voice. Then she asks,_ What about you? Who did you identify with most as a kid?_

Nicholas thinks hard. _I’m not really sure I saw myself in any of the Ghibli movies. Or any movies, I don’t know_

_Really?_

_Yeah, maybe I just don’t watch movies that way? _Nicholas leans back and gently scratches behind Ian Purrtis’s ears._ Which is fine I mean, I don’t really go into a movie looking for myself. I go so I can see someone else having an adventure, and I get to be thankful it’s not me sleeping on the cold hard ground or narrowly escaping the dragon _

_That’s a very Bilbo Baggins thing to say, _Jane says, and Nicholas imagines the smile on her face. _Maybe you’re just the quiet reluctant hero type and you haven’t found the adventure that looks like the one you want to be on yet._

Nicholas finds himself smiling now. _If I absolutely have to be typecast, I think maybe I’m more the loyal sidekick _

_Oh god no you’re right, you’re the Sam Gamgee, you’d carry Frodo up the volcano and everything _

_Haha, thanks, I think. _Nicholas pauses again, and then sends the photo. _Non-sequitur but Elliot’s asking if you want this?_

_Really? Is there a catch? _

“Jane’s asking if there’s a catch,” Nicholas says aloud.

Elliot looks up from refolding a shirt that Nicholas thinks might be puce. “No catch. Unless she wants there to be a catch, because that can be arranged.”

_Elliot says do you want there to be a catch? _Nicholas asks.

_Pff, _Jane answers; then,_ Tell him sure._

“Jane says sure,” Nicholas says.

Elliot stops. “Okay, admittedly that was unexpected. I don’t have anything good in mind.” He frowns and sets the off-white shirt on top of Nicholas’s knee. “Just—tell her she owes me a boon, then. Dammit. I should make a list for next time.”

_One boon, to be cashed in sometime in the indefinite future, _Nicholas tells her.

_He’s going to make me do Wes Anderson Halloween costumes with him again, isn’t he_

Nicholas grins. _Hey, to be fair you made a great vampire Margot Tenenbaum. _

_Was it the resting bitch face and the dark circles under my eyes _

Nicholas thinks for a moment, looking at the folded shirt resting on his knee, before responding. _Well I was going to say your enigmatic nature and quiet brilliance and tenacity, but sure we can go with the raccoon makeup _

_Ha, _Jane says. _Thanks, I think._

\--

“Why are we smiling at our phones?” Elliot asks on Monday morning, scooting his swivel chair over to Jane’s desk.

“We are not smiling.” Jane puts down her phone. “Who’s sprint leader this week again?”

“Me,” Elliot says, rubbing his hands together gleefully.

“Oh, god.” Elliot takes being sprint leader deathly seriously; after the first time, the COO had taken Jane aside and asked in a nervous whisper if Elliot was like, _okay._ “What unnecessarily elaborate team-building game are you making us do this time?” Jane asks.

“You’ll see.” Leaping to his feet, Elliot grabs the office tambourine and gives it a good shake. “Look alive, everyone,” he calls, leading the way into the conference room, as their coworkers look up from their screens blearily. Jane watches him for a moment, sighing in fond resignation, then picks up her phone again.

_Duty calls, _she tells Nicholas._ Have a good day._

_You too, _he replies, and then Jane kills her phone screen and gets up, allowing herself one long stretch before rolling her shoulders back and striding into the conference room.

The thing is, Jane likes her job. She’s _good_ at her job. But even if she and her teammates do win Elliot’s six-legged race icebreaker that morning, and the meeting that follows goes relatively well—when Jane gets back to her desk and looks at her task list, she feels a momentary, overwhelming sense all of a sudden of not wanting to _do _any of it, of not being where she wants to be at all.

She fights it down, and busies herself so much that she doesn’t have time to think about it—but by the time Jane gets back to her apartment in the evening and tells herself, _now is the time you get to think about it,_ she realizes she’s kept it so compressed all day that now she doesn’t seem to know how to reinflate it and let it take up space. This always happens, Jane thinks as she makes herself a mug of tea, frowning as she watches the leaves steep in the hot water.

At some point her roommate Arden wanders out and flops onto the sofa to watch_ Friends _reruns, and the laugh track starts to give Jane a headache—so she takes her mug and quietly escapes down the hall to her bedroom, where she closes the door and sits cross-legged at the foot of her mattress, staring blankly at the framed Kishi Bashi poster Caroline gave her that’s hanging above her headboard. She’s still out of sorts; restless but not enough to do anything productive, tired but not enough to just go to sleep. It’s like something is shifting beneath her skin, the kind of itch that moves too much for you to be able to scratch it.

Giving in and checking her phone, Jane sees she has a couple of new messages; some in the group chat, one from her dad, and one from Nicholas. Nicholas’s message contains a photo of one of the tables at the daycare center, which appears to have been entirely covered in finger paint.

_So this was how my day went,_ Nicholas’s text reads, and Jane smiles briefly at the thought of it. Then, as always, _How was yours?_

Jane stares down at her phone, balanced in her lap. When someone asks her how she is, Jane is accustomed to always answering _I’m fine,_ even—and especially—when it’s not true. But she feels, suddenly, too tired to lie to Nicholas, so she texts back, _Hey—honestly today was kind of exhausting_

And as soon as she sends it, she feels like she shouldn’t have—like she wants to take it back, like she’s opened some door now that can’t be closed. But then Nicholas says, _I’m sorry. Do you want to talk about it?_

Jane sets her mug down on her knee, feeling the heat of it bleed through her pajama leg and into her skin. _Maybe,_ she tells him finally. _I don’t really know._

She waits, and then she sees Nicholas start to type again. _Anything else I can do?_ he asks. _It doesn’t have to be talking about it if you don’t want to_

Jane presses her lips together. _It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it, I guess. It’s just kind of messy in my head_

She watches as Nicholas types, then stops typing. Starts typing again. _Do you want me to call? _

Jane sucks in her breath. She looks at her cursor, blinking in the message field, and realizes belatedly that she’s been pushing her thumbnail into the base of her index finger.

Then all of a sudden, Nicholas’s name lights up her screen, and Jane blinks at it for a moment before taking a breath and pressing green. “Hey,” she says, her voice rough. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be all—“

“No, no, it’s okay.” Nicholas hesitates. “Sorry—is it okay that I called?”

“Yeah.” Jane closes her eyes. “It’s…this is nice. Thank you.”

“’Kay. Give me a sec,” Nicholas says. Jane can hear him half-stepping, half-tripping over something, and then what sounds like the balcony door sliding open and shut again. His voice is soft. “So what happened today?”

Jane puts her mug on her bedside table and shifts so she’s leaning back against the headboard, pulling her knees up close to her. “Nothing happened, exactly, it’s just—do you sometimes feel like you’ve been suddenly pulled out of your own head, like you’re hovering somewhere outside of yourself looking at yourself, and you’re not sure you really understand what you’re seeing?”

“A little,” Nicholas replies after a moment. “Like...you don’t recognize yourself?”

“Yeah, like—“ Jane blows her breath out. “Like maybe I’ve had my head down for so long, just working and not—thinking, really. Maybe because if I think about it too hard I’ll realize what I’m doing doesn’t actually mean anything, or that I’m just too tired to feel like it’s worth it anymore, and what if it’s just—always going to be like this?”

Sighing, Jane thunks her head back against the wall. “Sorry, I don’t mean to whine. I know deep down today was just one of those days, and everyone goes through cycles of feeling like this on and off. But every now and then I guess...I wonder.”

Nicholas is quiet for a moment more. “So did you just need to let that out?”

“Yeah. I think I just needed to let it out.” Jane slides down the headboard a little and stretches her legs out. “Thanks.”

“For what it’s worth—it’s not whining if you have things you need to talk about that you’re not getting to talk about,” Nicholas says. “It’s okay to vent, whether or not you feel like you’re making sense. And you work hard; you deserve to cut yourself some slack every now and again.”

Jane grins wryly. “Are you giving me a _your feelings are valid _lecture right now, Doc?”

“Mm-hmm, and you should really listen to me, because I know what I’m talking about and your feelings are very valid.” The smile on Nicholas’s face is clear just from the sound of his voice, and then he says, “And just, you know. I’m always here if you need me. To grumble at, or be distracted by, or—anything.”

And Jane realizes, suddenly, that she isn’t—used to that. She’s used to being the one who offers to do things for people and then gets them done. She’s not accustomed to people telling her straight out they’ll give her what she needs; it feels like too much all of a sudden, some kind of luxury she doesn’t deserve, or a weakness she wasn’t prepared to admit, and to imagine Nicholas would welcome her ever doing this again feels like taking advantage of his kindness.

So all Jane says is, “Thank you. I—that means a lot,” and then, in a decidedly more casual tone, “What about you? Anything else happen today apart from the Great Finger Paint Flood of 2018?”

“The Great Finger Paint Flood of 2018 was it, thankfully. My jeans look like an abstract expressionist painting.” Nicholas chuckles. “What were you up to before I called?”

“Hiding from my roommate. I’m in bed, kind of.”

“Falling asleep?”

“Not yet. Maybe in a little while… What were you doing?”

“Just listening to music.”

Jane hides a smile and rolls over onto her side. “Blur again?”

“Believe it or not, I do listen to other things. Here—“ She can hear Nicholas sliding the balcony door open again, the phone crackling as he fiddles with something. Then she hears it, the beginning of a song, with a voice that’s unmistakably Sting’s. “Can you hear it?” Nicholas asks.

“Yeah.” Jane presses the phone closer to her ear, her other arm curled over her stomach. “I don’t think I know this one. I like it, though.”

“It’s a cover of ‘Little Wing’ by Jimi Hendrix.”

“God, that’s beautiful,” Jane says after the first chorus. Then she just lies there, quiet, and listens to the music; bold electric guitar with a throaty bass behind it, sliding smoothly into the light golden tones of a saxophone that seem to float away on the wind. Nicholas doesn’t say a word either, and it’s both a little strange and a little nice, to think that they’re listening to a song together like this. Jane imagines him sitting on the floor next to his record player, or maybe standing back on the balcony, leaning on the railing with his head tipped up to look at the night sky.

“Still there?” Nicholas asks after the song fades out, and the next track starts to play.

“Yeah.” Jane smiles faintly. “That was gorgeous. The guitar solo in the middle, Jesus.”

“Right? That’s Hiram Bullock, he was incredible. I attempted that solo once, when I was still learning in high school. Big mistake.”

“Hey, yeah, you never play the guitar anymore. What gives?”

“I’m old. So old. My hands aren’t what they used to be. They’re rheumy, you know, when a breeze comes they just seize up like—”

“Nicholas, you are being unbelievably corny right now.”

Nicholas laughs, long and soft. “Maybe someday I’ll go back to it. When I think of a song I like enough that I want to play.” He pauses. “Okay, sorry, I have to go, Ian Purrtis is glaring at me from on top of the kitchen table and that either means he’s hungry or he’s about to completely ignore the fact that he has a litterbox. You—get some rest, okay?”

“I will. Night, old man,” Jane says, feeling a twinge of fondness.

Nicholas laughs again. “Good night, Jane,” he says, and then she hangs up.

The stillness of her bedroom is humming around her now. Jane reaches for her tea and realizes they talked for so long that it’s gone completely cold. So instead she searches for the song Nicholas played on her phone, and lies back down and stares up at her ceiling, listening to it coming tinny out of the speaker, _take anything you want from me, anything, _and exhales, slow.

\--

As it turns out, it’s almost a month before Nicholas sees Jane in person again. August got busy for everyone, so they weren’t able to hang out as a complete group on the weekends the way they usually do—but finally they all find a Friday night they can block off for Deep Ellum. When Nicholas gets there and finds the others sitting around a patio table, Blake and Hazel are already having a mild argument about—what exactly, Nicholas can’t quite tell.

“I’m just _saying,”_ Blake says, waving a french fry around to punctuate his sentence. “Elton would definitely have a cute Fairy type like Flabebe, but he would also have one of the buckwild ones like Mismagius or Mawile, on account of his being a total badass.”

“Oh, come on, you wouldn’t put Milotic on Elton’s team?” Hazel retorts. “Milotic, that evolves from fucking _Feebas_ into a flamboyant pink water dragon? That’s the most Elton John Pokemon that ever lived.”

Blake points at Hazel with his fry. “No, you know who would have a Feebas? Lady Gaga. Lady Gaga would have a Feebas, and she would _keep it _a Feebas. Lady Gaga would only catch all the ugly weird ones no one cares about, like Trubbish and Klefki, and she would win every. Time.”

“Not against Beyonce, though, because you know Beyonce would have like, Rapidash and Vivillon and—“ Hazel flaps her hand at Tim. “Babe, what’s the grass serpent one?”

“Serperior,” Tim supplies.

“Serperior,” Hazel says triumphantly.

“Oh, Hazel, _Hazel,” _Blake says, his voice dripping with syrup. “Serperior is nowhere near as strong as you think it is. You know what one of its biggest weaknesses is? Poison. And you know what one of the most underrated Poison types is? _Trubbish.”_

Kate leans over to Nicholas. “Any moment now one of them’s going to bust out the L word, and then it’s over,” she whispers.

Nicholas blinks at her. “Wait, what?”

_“Lickitung?”_ Blake yells incredulously at Hazel, throwing his hands in the air. “Are you seriously sitting there and saying these things to me about _Lickitung_ with that mouth?”

Kate smirks. “And there we go.”

Nicholas chats with Kate for a bit about non-Pokemon-related things, and then he catches sight of Elliot and Jane coming up the stairs and heading for their table—and he doesn’t know why, but seeing Jane for the first time in a while is almost a shock to his system. Jane has her jacket slung back over her shoulder, listening as Elliot tells her a story, and then she replies with something that makes Elliot sputter indignantly. Already Nicholas can hear the deeper notes in Jane’s voice that don’t come across on the phone, the low thrum of her laughter. He wonders in the very back of his mind if she’ll accept a hug. 

Elliot spots Caroline and runs over to her, most likely to complain to her about whatever Jane said. Then Jane turns her head and sees Nicholas, and her eyebrows go up. “Hey,” she says, and she’s still smiling.

“Hi,” Nicholas says back—and then before he can think too much about it, he asks, “Will you accept a single hug from me?”

Jane looks surprised for a second. Then she grins crookedly at him and makes a beckoning gesture and says, “Okay, lay it on me,” and, grinning back, Nicholas leans in and pulls her close.

With his arms around her like this, Nicholas gains a new awareness of just how small Jane is next to him—which she hates having pointed out, of course, but Nicholas can’t help but think it to himself. The top of her head barely comes up to his chest. If he pulled up just a little, he’s certain he’d be able to lift her feet clear off the ground. She smells kind of sweet, too, like vanilla and cigarette smoke intermingled; he doesn’t think he ever noticed that before. He wonders if it’s weird that he’s noticing it now.

Nicholas feels Jane relax into him for a second or two, and then she starts to pull away, so he drops his arms and steps back. Jane is looking up at him, a slight puzzlement in her eyes. “It’s good to see you,” Nicholas says truthfully.

The corner of Jane’s mouth quirks upward. “Sap,” she says. “I still owe you a drink, by the way.”

Nicholas had completely forgotten. “What? No, you don’t have to.”

“I want to,” Jane says. “Seriously, let me.”

Nicholas suddenly wants to touch her affectionately in some way, but settles for elbowing her lightly. “Okay. But I’m getting your next one.”

“Is this what constitutes our friendship now?” Jane asks, clearly amused. “Are we just going to keep buying each other drinks until one of us dies?”

“Morbid,” Nicholas says, grinning. “But yeah, probably.”

Jane’s smile grows. “Sounds good to me,” she says, and Nicholas amiably lets her lead him in to the bar by the edge of his sleeve.

\--

Sometimes Jane and Caroline like to FaceTime while they’re working at home; today Caroline is speed-editing a batch of prenup photos, while Jane is making the wireframe for the new app. “I mean, I know you’re supposed to give the client what they want,” Caroline says, making a face at her monitor, “but I couldn’t _not _say anything, right?”

“So what _did_ you say?” Jane asks, grinning, as she drags her text layers into a folder and starts to neatly rename each one.

“I couldn’t say it outright, so I was kind of just trying to make gentle suggestions, like, ‘oh, the lighting here is so gorgeous—maybe you could take off the Scream masks just for a couple of shots, so I can see your lovely faces?’”

Jane covers her eyes and laugh-groans. “You’re an angel, truly,” she says, just as a message from Evelyn pops up on her screen: _EMERGENCY!!!!! D: D: D:_

“Caro, sorry, can I hop off for a minute?” Jane asks, starting to frown. “Evie needs something.”

“Aw, sure. Tell her I say hey.” Caroline wiggles her fingers at the camera. “Talk to you later,” she sings, and Jane blows her a kiss before ending the call.

Then Jane calls Evie, and as soon as her sister appears on her screen, she knows exactly what kind of emergency is going on. “Jiě jie!” Evie exclaims. “Thank god. Okay, which one is cuter—“ She holds up two different crop tops. “Thiiiis one, or _this _one?”

Jane sighs. “What’s the occasion?”

“Work party later. I wanted something that goes with my new hair.” Evie ruffles her hair, a wavier, choppier bob than Jane’s, that Jane keeps warning her will be ruined by her frequent dye jobs; this month it’s a bright lime green, which Jane has to admit does suit her.

“I like the wolf one better,” Jane says, and Evie beams. “So work’s good?” she asks.

“I’m Intern of the Month for the second month in a row now,” Evie says smugly, shimmying out of her EXO shirt and into the wolf crop top. “How ‘bout you? You guys still basking in the afterglow of _Redshirts?_ Which, thanks a lot by the way, now I have the fucking one-spaceship town song stuck in my head 24-7 because Sammy won’t stop playing it.”

“Blame Jonah, not me,” Jane says, grinning.

“Oh my god, did I tell you like _all_ the guys at the magazine watch _Still Waiting_ because they think Jonah is super hot? They share his Instagram posts in the group chat and everything. I still haven’t decided whether I should tell them how many Kevin Bacon degrees from Jonah I am, because on the one hand they might drop the internship crap and hire me on the spot, but on the other hand they’ll probably beg me for Jonah’s number and like, ask me what he eats for breakfast and shit.” Evie makes a face and turns to look at herself in her bedroom mirror. “But anyway—how’s _my _favorite actor doing?”

“Nicholas? Good, I think. He seems to really like working at the daycare, which is nice. Apparently they’ve got him leading the sing-alongs now, which Elliot is dying to see, but of course Nicholas will never demonstrate them for—“ Jane stops when she notices Evie is tilting her head at her. “What?”

“Nothing, it’s just—“ Evie is slowly raising her eyebrows. “That’s more than you usually say about Nicholas.”

“Is it?” Jane says, keeping her voice even. She looks back at her laptop screen and moves a random element around with her trackpad. “Well. You’re seeing him at my birthday thing, so you can ask him everything I’m sure you’ve been dying to ask him yourself.”

“Awww, am I still invited to your birthday?”

“Shǎguā. Of course you are. Is Sammy free? You can bring them too, if you want.”

Evie grins. “Seriously? They’d love that.” She glances at her phone. “Shit, I gotta go. Haven’t done my makeup yet. Thanks, jiě jie!”

“Take it easy, mèi mei.” Jane smiles at her sister. “See you soon.” Then Evie hangs up, and Jane sits back in her desk chair, frowning, feeling unsettled now for a reason she can’t explain.

_Don’t overthink it, sh__ǎ__gu__ā,_ Jane tells herself, shaking it off, and gets back to work.

\--

Elliot is lying on the sofa holding Ian Purrtis up like baby Simba when he says, “Hey, can Jane come over tomorrow night? We have a twenty-four-hour remote game jam thing for work.”

“Yeah, of course,” Nicholas says, and then stops. He can’t remember the last time Jane came over to their apartment; probably it was shortly after they first moved in, ages ago. Looking around, Nicholas vaguely feels like he needs to clean up, even though he just cleaned up the other day. He picks up one of the coffee table books and stares at it for a minute, before putting it back down an inch to the left from where it originally was. “Is she coming over for dinner, too?” Nicholas asks.

Jane arrives early the next evening with a big thing of hummus and pita bread, and a six-pack of craft beer. “For you,” she says, handing the beer to Nicholas.

“You’re really making good on the buying each other drinks until we die thing, huh,” Nicholas says, grinning and setting it on the counter next to the stove before going back to his saucepan. “Pasta’s almost ready. What time does your jam start?”

“Three AM,” Elliot says, wandering into the kitchen and dunking a triangle of pita bread into the hummus. “So we can still catch a couple hours of sleep before then.”

Nicholas shakes his head. “I will never understand the app developer life.”

They wind up eating dinner on the floor around the coffee table in front of one of the new Queer Eye episodes, and Elliot starts listing aloud the numerous other things Tan France could be suggesting to the nominee apart from a French tuck, and Nicholas carefully folds his legs underneath him and doesn’t touch Jane’s knee with his. Ian Purrtis, meanwhile, splays himself shamelessly across Jane’s lap to be petted, and looks at Nicholas with an expression that seems almost smug.

“Are you sure you’re okay out here?” Nicholas asks later, as he’s helping make up the couch for Jane. Elliot’s already gone to bed, after informing Jane he’s set their alarm for ten minutes before three (“If your dreams are abruptly interrupted by the opening trumpet blasts of ‘Run Away With Me,’ be not afraid,” he’d said just before disappearing into his bedroom). “I can swap with you if you want, it’s not a problem.”

“I’m not kicking you out of your bed,” Jane says firmly. “I’ve slept on sofas before.” Then her eyes turn mischievous. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to put your poor old back out.”

“Touché.” Nicholas hands her the blanket, then hesitates and asks, “Can I get you…anything else? Like—“

“A night light?” Jane asks sarcastically.

“Oh, absolutely. Glass of milk?” Nicholas replies lightly, deciding it’s better to try and play along. “A bedtime story? I can do you all the voices and everything.”

Jane rolls her eyes. “Seriously, Danny Tanner, I’m fine,” she says, and at first Nicholas thinks she’s actually annoyed. But then Jane smiles again like she’s laughing to herself—one of those rare flashes of warmth that Nicholas, somewhere in the back of his mind, realizes he always waits for.

Unrolling the blanket, Jane settles onto the sofa with it, tucking the corners in around her. Ian Purrtis immediately jumps up into her lap again, and she scratches behind his ears obediently. “Now go on, get out of here,” Jane says to Nicholas. “You need sleep if you want to have enough energy to wrangle your twenty children in the morning.”

Nicholas looks at Jane for a moment, sitting up on their sofa in the middle of the half-darkness. He thinks about something she told him, in a text a few late nights ago, when they were talking about what their first impressions of everyone had been, back in freshman year. They said they’d both been intimidated by Hazel, and Jane said she used to think Blake was the normal, quiet one, which Nicholas found hilarious.

_And then you, _Jane said. _Even in those first couple of weeks I noticed how—deliberate you were about everything,_ she told him, and Nicholas asked, somewhat surprised, _Really?_

_Yeah, I think I’ve always appreciated that about you,_ Jane said. _You don’t say anything unless you really mean it. And when there’s something you know you want to do, you go about it purposefully. You weigh things. And you take it step by step, however long it takes, because you want to be sure you’re doing it right. _

“You okay?” Jane asks, and only then does Nicholas realize she’s been looking back at him. Her hand has stilled in Ian Purrtis’s fur, her dark eyes questioning. The faint light from the kitchen falling over the soft edges of her; her hair, her shoulders, the curve of her cheek down to her jaw.

Nicholas swallows. “Yeah. Yeah, I just forgot to,” he trails off, gesturing vaguely to the kitchen light, before going to turn it out.

“Good night,” Jane calls from behind him.

“Night,” Nicholas answers quietly over his shoulder, and retreats down the hallway into his room.

\--

Jane generally doesn’t like doing anything elaborate for her birthday, if she even celebrates it at all—so this year she just told everyone to meet up for drinks at the Hong Kong (after successfully getting Blake to stop offering to host and party-plan, which she did by threatening to send a certain folder of photos Caroline has on her hard drive named ‘Halloween 2015’ to the Globe). The crowd is a good size tonight, and they manage to squeeze everyone around the corner table; Jane consents to Elliot putting a tiny sparkly paper top hat on her head, and gamely allows Caroline to squash her cheek happily against hers, and then she sees Evie and Sammy making their way through the door.

“HI, JIE JIE, YOU’RE SO OLD NOW,” Evie yells, letting go of Sammy’s hand so she can lock her arms around Jane’s neck and squeeze. Jane hugs her sister back tight, even as she struggles to breathe.

“Where’s _my_ hug?” Elliot demands, and laughing, Evie obliges. “Hey, you look stunning, kiddo. Your _hair!”_

“Thanks,” Evie says, beaming, then gasps, “Oh my god, wait, Elliot, this is Sammy,” and nudges Sammy forward. “My partner. In life and in crime.”

“Literally,” Sammy says with a grin, tugging their beanie down. “Our senior prank in high school involved us smuggling a small herd of goats into the library and making it look like they were eating the books. They almost didn’t let the two of us graduate. I’m a huge Shenanigans fan, by the way.”

Elliot lays his hand meaningfully on Evie’s shoulder. “You,” he says, “have excellent taste.”

Evie smirks. “I know.”

Then Nicholas comes over to say hi, too, and proceeds to be perfectly gentlemanly towards Evie and Sammy, and then Elliot starts entertaining them by telling them stories about Nicholas from college. Every now and then, Nicholas’s eyes flicker over their heads to Jane, and they share a small, private grin.

Then Blake pops up from somewhere and exclaims, “Elliot, thank _god,_ I need you to come over and settle this for us, because Hazel and Kate have been having terrible opinions about Fox’s _The Passion _for the past twenty minutes now, and Tim of course is just standing there being completely _useless.”_

“Coming,” Elliot says, dusting off the front of his suit and following Blake.

Sammy looks at the stage, then at Evie. “Will you sing Taylor Swift with me?”

Evie makes her _yuck_ face.

“If you do, I’ll do a Jonas Brothers song with you,” Sammy coaxes.

_“Babe,”_ Evie says, delighted, before slipping her arm through Sammy’s and disappearing into the crowd with them. Jane watches them go fondly.

The night goes on, and somewhere in the middle of all of it, Nicholas taps Jane on the shoulder, says “Happy birthday,” and passes her a paper bag. Jane opens it and pulls out a book—and then she just stares at it, because it’s a new hardback copy of _The Little White Horse_ by Elizabeth Goudge.

Jane looks up at Nicholas incredulously. Just once, in passing, she’d mentioned loving this book when she was younger and having lost it in the move. “How did you even remember…”

Nicholas shrugs. “I was just paying attention, I guess.”

Jane somehow can’t stop smiling. “Thank you,” she says. “This is—thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Nicholas’s eyes are oddly bright.

Thankfully, it’s then that Elliot, clearly buzzed, comes bounding back and grabs Jane by the hand. “I’ve signed us both up to sing ‘Time After Time’ because you’re the only person I trust with the harmonies right now,” he informs her.

“I,” Jane says, with a helpless glance towards Nicholas. “Why do I feel like this is somehow simultaneously a very nice compliment and also torture.”

“I’ll be cheering for you from here,” Nicholas says with an encouraging smile. Then he looks at Elliot and says, “Both of you.”

“Oh, Nicholas. One of these days we’ll have you singing yet,” Elliot says confidently, and pulls Jane toward the stage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wound up splitting this into two chapters because it was getting Unwieldy, hhhhh. But chapter 2 is coming after Sikenfic season, so have no fear <3 until then, thank you for getting on board this with me!


End file.
